The manufacture of integrated circuits (IC), semiconductor devices, flat panel displays, optoelectronics devices, data storage devices, magnetoelectronic devices, magnetooptic devices, packaged devices, and the like entails the integration and sequencing of many unit processing steps. As an example, IC manufacturing typically includes a series of processing steps such as cleaning, surface preparation, deposition, lithography, patterning, etching, planarization, implantation, thermal annealing, and other related unit processing steps. The precise sequencing and integration of the unit processing steps enables the formation of functional devices meeting desired performance metrics such as speed, power consumption, yield and reliability.
In addition to the increasingly challenging process sequence integration requirements, the tools and equipment employed in device manufacturing have been developed to enable the processing of ever increasing substrate sizes such as the move from 4 inch to 6 inch, to 8 inch (or 200 mm), and now to 12 inch (or 300 mm) diameter wafers in order to fit more ICs per substrate per unit processing step for productivity and cost benefits. Other methods of increasing productivity and decreasing manufacturing costs have been to use batch reactors whereby multiple monolithic substrates can be processed in parallel. A common theme has been to process the entire monolithic substrate or batch substrates uniformly, in the same fashion with the same resulting physical, chemical, electrical, and the like properties across the monolithic substrate.
The ability to process uniformly across an entire monolithic substrate and/or across a series of monolithic substrates is advantageous for manufacturing cost effectiveness, repeatability and control when a desired process sequence flow for IC manufacturing has been qualified to provide devices meeting desired yield and performance specifications. However, processing the entire substrate can be disadvantageous when optimizing, qualifying, or investigating new materials, new processes, and/or new process sequence integration schemes, since the entire substrate is nominally made the same using the same material(s), process(es), and process sequence integration scheme. Conventional full-wafer uniform processing results in fewer data per substrate, longer times to accumulate a wide variety of data and higher costs associated with obtaining such data.
As part of the discovery, optimization, and qualification process, it is desirable to be able to i) test different materials, ii) test different processing conditions within each unit process module, iii) test different sequencing and integration of processing modules within an integrated processing tool, iv) test different sequencing of processing tools in executing different process sequence integration flows, and combinations thereof in the manufacture of devices such as integrated circuits. In particular, there is a need to be able to test i) more than one material, ii) more than one processing condition, iii) more than one sequence of processing conditions, iv) more than one process sequence integration flow, and combinations thereof, collectively known as “combinatorial process sequence integration”, on a single monolithic substrate without the need of consuming the equivalent number of monolithic substrates per material(s), processing condition(s), sequence(s) of processing conditions, sequence(s) of processes, and combinations thereof. This can greatly improve both the speed and reduce the costs associated with the discovery, implementation, optimization, and qualification of material(s), process(es), and process integration sequence(s) required for manufacturing.
In addition, there is a need to be able to perform the aforementioned “combinatorial process sequence integration” testing which maximizes the use of the real estate allowed per single monolithic substrate while minimizing the amount of complexity associated with any equipment needed to perform such testing.